Black
Gold
 Regardless
of what the "news" is reporting on Keith Olbermann's
departure from MSNBC it had almost EVERYTHING
to do with the recent NBC/Comcast merger and
a little
to do with Sarah Palin for president. More on
Monday.
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After
wrecking the mortgage industry the big boys on
Wall Street needed a new way to vacuum the wallets
of the unsuspecting greedheads across this great
country. This time the scam is gold, which has
lately reached record heights in value. Will
its price eventually crash, leaving countless
retirement portfolios worthless?
Uh, yeah. The only thing
we don't know is exactly how Wall Street will blame the coming
crash on Main Street... again.
While I'm on the subject, do you know how gold is
mined these days? Especially by third-worlders
with an
empty
belly
and a casa full of ninos to feed?
First, you find a spot in the jungle where
the federales can't find you, at least for
a while,
then you sneak in massive pumps and large
hoses. These
hoses are then turned on the surrounding
forest, blasting powerful streams of water at the
surrounding land, quickly reducing it
to slurry. That bit
of
jungle
is
jungle
no more.
This slurry is then put in settling tanks
whose bottom contains mercury. The gold in
the sludge
eventually settles and combines naturally
with the mercury. Pour off the sludge and
you have
a yucky,
poison gumbo remaining. To extract the gold
the muck is heated, whereupon the mercury
boils away into
the atmosphere.
What remains
is mostly gold.
But what about that mercury now floating around
in the air. Isn't it dangerous? Yes, but
it's worse than you think, because now it's methylmercury,
a bioaccumulant that can cause birth defects.
Tons of this stuff is being burned every
year
and
once it gets into the food cycle, especially
in fish, it stays there.
So if you want to destroy the rain forest, poison
the air, drive gas prices past $5 a gallon
and keep the fat cats fat then by all means keep investing in gold. That's
evidently
why
God
put it here.
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In case you're wondering, and you probably
aren't, today's cartoon came as a result
of me trying to determine the steps an all-powerful
deity would take if he/she/it were to create
a universe.
Yeah, you might
think it's as easy as snapping your fingers
and POOF instant universe, but it's clear even the hairiest
of thunderer's would have to have some clear
understanding of atomic theory as everything
we know is built according to understandable rules. Not
only that, but he/she/it would have had to have invented
the basic building blocks of all matter... quarks.
This of course assumes that quarks are as small as it gets.
For all we know they might just comprised of even
smaller units of matter. If so then is it conceivable
that there's no such thing as too small?
Incidentally, I reserve the right to make minor "improvements" to
my
cartoons as time goes along. This one is no exception.
=Lefty=
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